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Compiled from supplied material, not independently verified item by item. Confirm opening hours, access and accuracy with the operator. Counts are records, not unique places.

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209 records · 4/9

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Sefa Utaki

南城市本島南部

A sacred site with no building: two fallen rocks lean into a triangular passage, and the sacred island appears at its end.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Yomitanzan Ware and the Pottery Village

読谷村本島中部

Potters left Naha for this village over smoke restrictions; a Living National Treasure built the first kiln, and nineteen studios now share one.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Yomitanzan Hanaui

読谷村本島中部

Geometric flowers raised by floating threads; the craft died out and was reconstructed in 1964 from old cloth and older memories.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Kijoka Banana Fibre Cloth

大宜味村本島北部

The village grows the plants, strips the fibre, splits it, spins and weaves - two hundred stems for a single bolt of cloth.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Ryukyu Glass

糸満市本島南部

It began with melting down bottles the US military threw away; the bubbles the impurities caused were kept as the point.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Himeyuri Peace Museum

糸満市本島南部

Founded by the surviving students themselves, who gathered the testimony and wrote the wall texts in their own words.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Cornerstone of Peace

糸満市本島南部

Over 240,000 names cut into folding stone walls - carved without dividing by nationality, uniform, or side.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Nago City Hall

名護市本島北部

Built to work by wind rather than air-conditioning, with 56 shisa on its walls - each named by a citizen.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Taketomi Island Village

竹富町八重山

Red-tiled houses inside coral walls on sand lanes, kept by a charter the islanders wrote: do not sell, spoil, disturb or destroy - use it.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Tonaki Island Village

渡名喜村離島

House plots are dug a metre below the lane to duck the typhoons - the whole village sunk into the ground.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Bise Fukugi Windbreak

本部町本島北部

Three centuries of planting windbreak trees around every house has left twenty thousand of them, roofing the lanes in green.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Miyako Jofu Ramie Cloth

宮古島市宮古

Ramie split by fingernail into thread finer than hair, woven and then beaten with mallets to a sheen; over a year for one bolt.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Kumejima Tsumugi

久米島町離島

One person carries the whole process from silkworm to finished cloth, dyeing with island plants and fixing in mud.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Yaeyama Minsa

石垣市八重山

Five dots and four, read as a pun meaning 'for ever and ever' - the pattern a woman wove into a sash for the man she chose.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Yaeyama Museum

石垣市八重山

Yaeyama's everyday objects, including a sabani boat - built not with nails but sewn together.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Shisa

那覇市本島南部

Roof shisa are modelled on the spot by the tiler from leftover plaster - so every one differs, and the island's roofs are covered in unrepeated sculpt…

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Turtleback Tombs

那覇市本島南部

Said to be shaped as a womb - the idea of returning to where one came from, built directly as architecture.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Red Tile Roofs

那覇市本島南部

Plaster packed between the tiles to stop the typhoons lifting them - and that necessity produced the island's red-and-white roofs.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Markets of Naha

那覇市本島南部

Markets and alleys descended from the postwar black market - unplanned, endlessly extended, and still trading.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Utaki Sacred Groves

南城市本島南部

No buildings: a grove or a rock is the sacred place, marked by nothing but a stone incense holder - hundreds of them across the islands.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Kudaka Island

南城市本島南部

The island of the Ryukyuan creation myth, where land is still held communally rather than owned by individuals.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Arayachi and Jouyachi

那覇市本島南部

Storage jars are left unglazed and tableware glazed - the use deciding the firing, with nothing in between.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Ryukyu Dance Costume

那覇市本島南部

Dance the court developed to entertain Chinese envoys; its bingata costumes are coloured to carry from a stage.

沖縄県 · Art & museums

Eisa

沖縄市本島中部

Danced by each village's young men's association; the drum shape and costume colour tell you which village at a glance.